DAVID BLUNKETT may face a Commons inquiry into his financial links with a businessman who introduced him to a 29-year-old woman now negotiating to sell her story to the publicist Max Clifford.

Mr Blunkett had a non-executive position in DNA Structures, which sells DNA testing and is run by Tariq Siddiqi shortly before the general election when he was a backbencher.

Mr Siddiqi has had a colourful business career, having been involved with a number of ventures that have gone bankrupt with debts of close to £1 million.

Mr Blunkett’s aides said yesterday that he held a director’s post for three weeks before the general election which had been declared in the proper way.

But the company maintained that Mr Blunkett, recalled to the Cabinet as Work and Pensions Secretary after the election, had been employed for three months.

Chris Grayling, the Shadow Leader of the House of Commons, is to write to Mr Blunkett to seek clarification of his financial relationship with Mr Siddiqi.

Mr Siddiqi introduced Mr Blunkett to Sally Anderson, an estate agent, at Annabel’s who is negotiating a possible “kiss and tell” story about their friendship.

“If he cannot satisfy me about the apparent discrepancy I will be referring the matter to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards,” Mr Grayling said.

A spokesman for Mr Blunkett said: “Three months is wrong. The work between April 16 and May 6 was declared to all the relevant authorities.

“They decided it did not need to be declared in the Commons register because he was not a minister at the time and the House was not sitting.”

Mr Blunkett may also face a separate investigation after it was alleged that he was given free membership of Annabel’s, a popular haunt with aristocrats. Mark Birley, the owner, said at the weekend that he had given Mr Blunkett honorary membership, worth £750-a-year, four years ago. It has not been declared in the Commons register of interests.

Mr Blunkett’s spokesman said: “He was made the honorary offer but he did not take it up so did not think he was required to declare it.”

It was at Annabel’s that Mr Siddiqi made the introduction to Miss Anderson, who was engaged at the time and is now in talks with Mr Clifford about her friendship with the Pensions Secretary.

It has emerged that a telephone call tipping off the media that Miss Anderson was leaving the club with Mr Blunkett was made on a mobile telephone registered in her name.

The minister faces further embarrassment today when Channel 4’s digital channel More 4 broadcasts A Very Social Secretary, a drama about his relationship with Kimberly Quinn, the married publisher of the Spectator.

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